African American Quotations (F to J)

"If we can put the names of our faiths aside for the moment and look at principles, we fill find a common thread running through all the great religious expressions." -- Louis Farrakhan

"Islam has always been a force that dispels tyrants and tyranny, opression and exploitaion. Islam has always been a force that militates for justice." -- Louis Farrakhan

"Never exalt people because they're in your family; never exalt people because they're your color.never exalt people because they're your kinfolk. Exalt them because they're worthy." -- Louis Farrakhan

"Just don't give up trying to do what you really want to do. Where there's love and inspiration, I don't think you can go wrong." -- Ella Fitzgerald

"The only thing better than singing is more singing." -- Ella Fitzgerald

"It isn't where you came from, its where you're going that counts." -- Ella Fitzgerald

"I'm the world heavyweight champion. I consider myself a citizen of the whole world." -- George Foreman

"I don't even think about a retirement program because I'm working for the Lord, for the Almighty. And even thought the Lord's pay isn't very high, his retirement program is, you might say, out of this world." -- George Foreman

"Ours is supposed to be a government in which classes and distinctions melt into a harmonious whole. Until we reach this ideal of government, we will be a distracted, contentious people." -- T. Thomas Fortune

"Trying to grow up is hurting, you know. You make mistakes. You try to learn from them, and when you don't, it hurts even more. And I've been hurt -- hurt bad. I might be twenty-six, but I'm an old woman in disguise -- twenty-six goin' on sixty-five." -- Aretha Franklin

"It was necessary, as a black historian, to have a personal agenda." -- John Hope Franklin

"We also learn that this country and the Western world have no monopoly of goodness and truth and scholarship, we begin to appreciate the ingredients that are indispensable to making a better world. In a life of learning that is, perhaps, the greatest lesson of all." -- John Hope Franklin

"We must go beyond textbooks, go out into the bypaths and untrodden depths of the wilderness and travel and explore and tell the world the glories of our journey." -- John Hope Franklin

"When I go out there, I have no pity on my brother. I'm out there to win." -- Joe Frazier

"Sometimes you got to hurt something to help something. Sometimes you have to plow under one thing in order for something else to grow." -- Ernest J. Gaines

"I have learned as much about writing about my people by listening to blues and jazz and spirituals as I have from reading novels. The understatements in the tenor saxophone of Lester Young, the crystal, haunting, forever searching sounds of John Coltrane, and the softness and violence of Count Basie's big band -- all have fired my imagination as much as anything in literature." -- Ernest J. Gaines

"Mama and I would go to a funeral and she'd stand up to read the dead person's eulogy. She made the ignorant and ugly sound like scholars and movie stars, turned the mean and evil into saints and angels. She knew what people had meant to be in their hearts, not what the world had forced them to become. She knew the ways in which working too hard for paltry wages could turn you mean and cold, could kill the thing that made you laugh." -- Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

"I sing about life." -- Marvin Gaye

"Marriage is miserable unless you find the right person that is your soulmate and that takes a lot of looking." -- Marvin Gaye

"I hope to refine music, study it, try to find some area that I can unlock. I don't quite know how to explain it but it's there. These can't be the only notes in the world, there's got to be other notes some place, in some dimension, between the cracks on the piano keys." -- Marvin Gaye

"Great artists suffer for the people." -- Marvin Gaye

"When I was playing I never wished I was doing anything else. I think being a professional athlete is the finest thing a man can do. " -- Bob Gibson

"Why do I jave to be an example for your kid? You be an example for your own kid." -- Bob Gibson

"In a world filled with hate, prejudice, and protest, I find that I too am filled with hate, prejudice, and protest." -- Bob Gibson

"I don't care much about music. What I like is sounds." -- Dizzy Gillespie

"You, my children of battle, are your heroes You must invent your own games and teach us old ones how to play." -- Nikki Giovanni

"We eat up artists like there's going to be a famine at the end." -- Nikki Giovanni

"We write because we believe the human spirit cannot be tamed and should not be trained." -- Nikki Giovanni

"I really don't think life is about the I-could-have-beens. Life is only about the I-tried-to-do. I don't mind the failure but I can't imagine that I'd forgive myself if I didn't try." -- Nikki Giovanni

"I like to tell the truth as I see it. That's why literature is so important. We cannot possibly leave it to history as a discipline nor to sociology nor science nor economics to tell the story of our people. It's not a ladder we are climbing, it's literature we're producing, and there will always be someone to read it." -- Nikki Giovanni

"Poor people are allowed the same dreams as everyone else." -- Kimi Gray

"America will tolerate the taking of a human life without giving it a second thought. But don't misuse a household pet." -- Dick Gregory, The Shadow that Scares Me

"I never learned hate at home, or shame. I had to go to school for that." -- Dick Gregory

"When you have a good mother and no father, God kind of sits in. It's not enough, but it helps." -- Dick Gregory

"We thought I was going to be a great athlete, and we were wrong, and I thought I was going to be a great entertainer, and that wasn't it either. I'm going to be an American Citizen. First class." -- Dick Gregory

"In America, with all of its evils and faults, you can still reach through the forest and see the sun. But we don't know yet whether that sun is rising or setting for our country. " -- Dick Gregory

"Provoking, isn't it? that when one is most in need of sensible words, one finds them not." -- Charlotte L. Forten Grimke

"I wonder that every colored person is not a misanthrope. Surely we have everything to make us hate mankind." -- Charlotte L. Forten Grimke

"It is only what is written upon the soul of man that will survive the wreck of time." -- Francis J. Grimke

"I make an active effort to remain a positive role model to kids. They need people to show them there's another way." -- M. C. Hammer

"I never wanted to be a star, I just wanted to get work." -- Gregory Hines

"Dope never helped anybody sing better or play music better or do anything better. All dope can do for you is kill you -- and kill you the long, slow, hard way." -- Billie Holiday

"Humor is laughing at what you haven't got when you ought to have it." -- Langston Hughes

"I hear that melting-pot stuff a lot, and all I can say is that we haven't melted." -- Jesse Jackson

"A man must be willing to die for justice. Death is an inescapable reality and men die daily, but good deeds live forever." -- Jesse Jackson, Jesse Jackson: The Man, The Movement, The Myth

"We can go on talking about racism and who treated whom badly, but what are you going to do about it? Are you going to wallow in that or are you going to create your own agenda?" -- Judith Jamison

"I made a lot of mistakes out of the ring, but I never made any in it." -- Jack Johnson

"The game is my wife. It demands loyalty and responsibility, and it gives me back fulfillment and peace." -- Michael Jordan

"Even when I'm old and grey, I won't be able to play it, but I'll still love the game."-- Michael Jordan

"I never thought a role model should be negative."-- Michael Jordan

"I play to win, whether during practice or a real game. And I will not let anything get in the way of me and my competitive enthusiasm to win."-- Michael Jordan

"I realize that I'm black, but I like to be viewed as a person, and this is everybody's wish."-- Michael Jordan

"I've always believed that if you put in the work, the results will come. I don't do things half-heartedly. Because I know if I do, then I can expect half-hearted results."-- Michael Jordan

"I've failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed."-- Michael Jordan

"I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."-- Michael Jordan

"If you accept the expectations of others, especially negative ones, then you never will change the outcome."-- Michael Jordan

"If you're trying to achieve, there will be roadblocks. I've had them; everybody has had them. But obstacles don't have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don't turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it."-- Michael Jordan

"My attitude is that if you push me towards something that you think is a weakness, then I will turn that perceived weakness into a strength."-- Michael Jordan

"To be successful you have to be selfish, or else you never achieve. And once you get to your highest level, then you have to be unselfish. Stay reachable. Stay in touch. Don't isolate."-- Michael Jordan